Photo: W. Bulach (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Roughly 1,250 to 2,500 years old.
Ancient trees in New Zealand
New Zealand's old trees split across two entirely different timescales. This page maps 13 remarkable trees across 3 cities in New Zealand, each one researched and verified. The oldest of them is Tāne Mahuta in Waipoua Forest, at estimated 1,250 to 2,500 years old; age is not precisely measurable.
Deep in Waipoua Forest stands Tane Mahuta, the largest known kauri alive, estimated at somewhere between 1,250 and 2,500 years old, a single tree that predates New Zealand's human settlement by more than a thousand years and is protected today by a boardwalk that never lets a boot touch its roots. Everything else mapped here is comparatively young and imported. Christchurch's oldest surviving oak went into the ground in 1863 to mark a royal wedding, and outlived the 2011 earthquake that flattened the buildings around its neighbours in Cranmer and Latimer Squares. Auckland's coronation oaks, planted for Edward VII and George V, and its Moreton Bay figs brought over from Australia, are barely a century old beside the kauri: a colony's civic ceremonies and a forest's own patience running on entirely different clocks.
Every place we map in New Zealand
1Christchurch6 trees · oldest planted 18632
Auckland5 trees · oldest about 176 years3Waipoua Forest2 trees · oldest estimated 1,250 to 2,500 years old; age is not precisely measurable
Auckland5 trees · oldest about 176 years3Waipoua Forest2 trees · oldest estimated 1,250 to 2,500 years old; age is not precisely measurable7 species grow in New Zealand
Oaks Pedunculate Oak 3 · Algerian Oak 1
Planes London Plane 3
Figs and mulberries Moreton Bay Fig 2
Conifers Kauri 2
Southern hemisphere Alpine Ash 1
More broadleaf trees Lombardy Poplar 1
The 10 oldest trees we map in New Zealand
Photo: Pseudopanax (CC BY 4.0)
Roughly 1,200 to 4,000 years old.
Roughly 170 to 180 years old.
About 163 years old.
Roughly 140 to 145 years old.
Photo: Bjankuloski06 (CC BY 4.0)
Roughly 122 to 126 years old.
Photo: Bjankuloski06 (CC BY 4.0)
Roughly 114 to 118 years old.
Roughly 100 to 140 years old.
Roughly 100 to 110 years old.
Roughly 95 to 105 years old.
Trees from New Zealand also appear in The Trees the World Has Written About · The Tallest Trees We Have Measured · The Oldest Tree in Every City We Map. See every city on the map, or open the map to find what is near you.